VLC crosses 7 billion downloads, about a year and a half after 6 billion

VLC crosses 7 billion downloads

The VLC media player has passed 7 billion downloads across all platforms, TechCrunch reports. The milestone was announced by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president and lead developer of VLC, in an emailed update.

VLC is built by VideoLAN, a non-profit, and differs from most modern media software on two points: it is free and it runs offline, playing files stored on the user's own device rather than serving content behind a subscription. That formula still appears to be in demand. The 7 billion figure arrives after VLC crossed the 6 billion mark in January 2025, which works out to roughly another billion downloads in about a year and a half.

Ports, VLC 4 and AI subtitles

Alongside the numbers, Kempf gave a short status update on where the project is heading. VideoLAN recently ported VLC to Amazon's new Vega OS for TVs, extending the player to another category of screens. The organisation says it is also working on supporting additional platforms and codecs — the broad format coverage that has long been a core reason people install VLC in the first place.

The next major version, VLC 4, is in preparation, but Kempf noted that development is taking time. No release date was given.

One earlier announcement remains unresolved. In 2025, VideoLAN teased AI-powered translation and subtitles based on local models, but according to TechCrunch it is not clear whether those features were ever released.

Why it matters

Seven billion downloads is a scale almost never reached by non-commercial, open-source software, and it lands at a moment when media consumption has largely shifted to paid streaming platforms. A free, offline player still accumulating downloads at this pace points to sustained mass demand for local file playback, format compatibility and software that does not sit behind a paywall.

The update also sketches both sides of running such a project. On one side, the Vega OS port shows VideoLAN following users to new platforms, including televisions, rather than retreating to the desktop. On the other, the slow progress toward VLC 4 illustrates how hard it is to ship a major release while keeping an application working across a huge range of platforms and codecs without a commercial backer.

Whether the teased local AI subtitle and translation features ever ship will be a telling signal. They would test how a project that has built its reputation on running entirely on the user's machine handles newer, compute-heavy capabilities.